PAX Australiahttp://www.maclife.com/taxonomy/term/16415/all
enFramed (iOS/Mac) hands-on previewhttp://www.maclife.com/article/games/framed_iosmac_handson_preview
<!--paging_filter--><p>Loveshack Entertainment's upcoming iOS and Mac game Framed really stood out at the PAX Australia pop culture convention this past weekend. Not for flashy graphics – although the stylized painted visuals are impressive – but for the way in which it combines comic books, games, and animated storytelling in a fascinating, immediately compelling experience.<br /><br />It plays like an interactive comic book in which you can reorder the panels and change the scene. By reframing the action, you alter both the journey of your intrepid hero through a scene and its end result. Framed wants you to think about context; how does the state of one panel affect what happens in the next? If you've just jumped from a window and are sliding down a wire, but then someone points a gun at you, they’re obviously preparing to shoot. But you can change your fate by switching the panels, and putting a panel with a bird resting on the wire before the one where you're down the barrel of a gun. A small change in context can have a huge effect on the outcome.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u325188/2013/07/screen1.png" width="620" height="465" /></p><p>Everything in Framed follows a certain kind of logic, although sometimes it's hard to figure out what that is. You need to read a scene as or before it plays out, filling in the blanks – the gutters (or white space) between frames – in order to puzzle out where your silhouetted character will appear and subsequently move. It's clever, and most importantly, it makes you feel clever when you don't need to replay a scene to get it right.<br /><br />It helps that the story sounds like it'll be great. You were framed for a crime you didn't commit, and now you need to escape the police and clear your name. They aren't pulling any punches, however, so you're a dead man if they catch you. Good thing you have an ace up your sleeve, then, in that you can adjust the flow of panels, thereby altering your own fate. Some scenes have just one success state and several fail states – each of which you can watch and learn from – while others offer multiple pathways. Maybe you can pick up a shotgun and blast your way out, or instead take cover behind a table and sneak away. Change how the scene is framed and you rewrite the story.<br /><br /> <iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/sQetrrlg1jk" width="620" height="465" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br /> We'll have to wait and see how it fits together across a full game, since the demo build included only a handful of scenes from the beginning of the game, but early signs are that it will be something special. Framed is planned for release on iOS and Mac early next year, and we can't wait to get our hands on the final product.</p>http://www.maclife.com/article/games/framed_iosmac_handson_preview#commentsFramedgamesiOSLoveshack EntertainmentMacPAX AustraliaGamesWed, 24 Jul 2013 22:45:00 +0000Richard Moss17617 at http://www.maclife.com10 Exciting iOS and Mac Games at PAX Australiahttp://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/10_exciting_ios_and_mac_games_pax_australia
<!--paging_filter--><p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u325188/2013/07/screen_22.png" /></p><p>Indie developers were out in force for Australia’s first PAX gaming convention, with iOS games outnumbering offerings on other platforms on the show floor. Ubisoft and Nintendo stood mostly alone as the big publishers in attendance, joined by mobile giants Halfbrick and more than 20 smaller developers, many of which rose from the ashes of now-defunct AAA companies like Blue Tongue and Pandemic. And they made an impression. Here are 10 of the most intriguing new and upcoming iOS and Mac games we saw on the show floor at PAX Australia.</p>http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/10_exciting_ios_and_mac_games_pax_australia#commentsGalleryAppLifeAppsArmelloColossatronDUETFramedGame of WatchcraftgamesInfluxiOSMacParticularsPAX AustraliaPrince of PersiaRobots Can't JumpToy ManiaiPadiPhoneiPodMacTue, 23 Jul 2013 19:40:57 +0000Richard Moss17602 at http://www.maclife.comHalfbrick's Colossatron: Massive World Threat Revealed at PAX Australiahttp://www.maclife.com/article/games/halfbricks_colossatron_massive_world_threat_revealed_pax_australia
<!--paging_filter--><p>Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride developer Halfbrick announced its next iOS game, Colossatron: Massive World Threat, at a panel at the PAX Australia gaming convention this weekend, revealing details about its story, gameplay, and development.<br /><br />Colossatron puts you in the role a giant robotic snake from outer space that's intent on doing as much damage as possible to the Earth. Producer Sean Druitt came up with the idea after noting that tower defense games tend to be passive once you’ve set up your defenses. “I wanted to do something where you could build things on the fly, and actually react to the environment around you while you're playing,” he explained during a panel discussion on the game.<br /><br />The team also took inspiration from 1980s cartoons, "bullet hell" shoot-‘em-ups, and match-three puzzle games, settling on the current concept after going through more than 20 prototypes. “We’d come in and be like, ‘I’ve got this insane idea,’ and we’d try it out for a week and it’d turn out to be crap,” said executive producer Ben Vale. “And we’d kill it.” The prototype that became Colossatron turned out to be fun, however, and eight months later, Halfbrick’s ready to start teasing the results. And luckily, we were able to get some hands-on time with it on the show floor.</p><p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JoNqnn_goFE" width="620" height="349" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><p><br />You begin in space, able to attach three Powernodes — tank-like segments — of different color to Colossatron’s body. The robotic snake then crash-lands on Earth, where both the military and TV news mobilize to bear witness to your wanton destruction of anything and everything. More Powernodes (colored red, yellow, or blue) float onto the screen periodically, which you can combine to form new colors or — if you line up three in a row of the same color — a stronger Powernode, all the while building a more powerful Colossatron.<br /><br />These Powernodes fire automatically on incoming soldiers and vehicles, with Colossatron snaking around the screen destroying everything in its path to the tune of explosions and TV news commentary — courtesy of Rick Dalton and Katie Hazard of Metro 6 Action News. You can fire more concentrated bursts at a particular area of the screen for a few seconds, with a five-second cooldown timer in between bursts.<br /><br />“The aim of the game is to destroy the world, essentially,” explained Phil Larsen, the studio's chief marketing officer. You do as much damage as possible, as quickly as you can, in order to maximize your score — which is calculated according to the value of damage caused. But you also need to preserve your Colossatron’s health as best you can. Enemies come at a steady clip, buffeted by waves of stronger units, and it soon becomes impossible to hold them all at bay.<br /><br />This is where Colossatron gets strategic. You can slide Powernodes into the snake all willy-nilly, but for best results it seems that you’ll have to think about not only how to utilize color-matching power-ups, but also how to spread or concentrate skills around. Some Powernodes heal adjacent segments, while others provide a shield around a small area. We also encountered rapid-fire and mega-bomb Powernodes during the demo, with the latter causing a one-time explosion that wipes out everything on screen.<br /><br />We weren’t able to control Colossatron directly, and it looks as though that will stay the same for the final release. Managing the building and firing components gets pretty hairy as you rack up millions of dollars in damage or struggle against level bosses. You can expect to use both hands simultaneously, desperately trying not to block your vision while keeping track of the action onscreen. This visibility issue may need tuning before release, as the muddle of explosions, bullets, fancy effects, and user interface bits all contribute to a scene of utter madness that detracts from the fun of destruction in these more chaotic moments.<br /><br />Halfbrick has yet to announce a release date or which platforms Colossatron will be coming to, but the demo units were all iPads, so we can expect iOS at the very least. It also remains to be seen how the cartoon cinematics of Metro 6 Action News or gameplay itself will hold up when fleshed out to a longer, complete game, but with Halfbrick’s pedigree, you can be sure that it will be tuned for both casual and hardcore players.</p>http://www.maclife.com/article/games/halfbricks_colossatron_massive_world_threat_revealed_pax_australia#commentsNewsAppsColossatronFruit NinjaHalfbrickiOSios gamesPAXPAX AustraliaPreviewsoftwareiPadiPhoneiPodGamesMon, 22 Jul 2013 22:51:28 +0000Richard Moss17592 at http://www.maclife.com